We’re big believers in the power of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to boost brand visibility and to connect with consumers. We’re hardly the only digital marketing agency to think so. With that said, we understand that Google AdWords can be difficult for the PPC novice to understand, let alone optimize. That can be frustrating: we talk to many small business owners who believe AdWords can work for them, but they’re just not sure how.
encompass blog
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This has always been a basic concept of retail: You’re not going to sell any products if nobody knows that your store exists. This was true in the brick and mortar era, and it’s still true today. Online stores can have perfect business models, outstanding products, incredible prices, and amazing customer service—but if the store itself is not well marketed and made highly visible, it’s simply not going to do well. It is imperative that ecommerce merchants do anything they can to make sure people are aware of their store.
You may have heard it said that “Citation services are a secret SEO marketing tool.” In 2016 it’s true. Citation services are incredibly effective, incredibly important and incredibly overlooked. Because so few businesses even know where to begin with citation services, we recently conducted a short webinar where we let the cat out of the bag and shed some light on what citation services are—and why they are important.
Your company website may be three pages or it may be 300; regardless, your homepage is inevitably the centerpiece, and likely the most important online asset you’ve got. It’s your company’s virtual storefront, and it sets the first impression that many customers will have of your company. As such, it’s important to do anything and everything in your power to maximize your home page’s impact—and that includes optimizing it for search engine visibility.
Most business owners take online reviews fairly seriously—as they should. Consumers are increasingly turning to sites like Google+, Facebook, Yelp and Angie’s List to help inform their purchasing decisions. In this consumer landscape, online reviews can carry a lot of weight, and can have a significant impact on a brand’s public perception and ultimately its bottom line. That’s not where the significance of reviews ends, however. They don’t just shape consumer behavior, but also search engine rankings. The question is how.
Online marketing has always been fairly keyword-centric, and not without reason. While it is certainly possible to overuse keywords, or to use them in a way that’s not strategically sound, having some good, solid keywords can provide direction for your content creation. It can also ensure that the content you develop is properly categorized and qualified by the search engine algorithms. Meanwhile, when it comes to PPC advertising, keyword research is essentially mandatory. The bottom line: If you’re thinking about digital marketing, you have to be discerning in terms of keywords.
Although it’s usually imperceptible to the general public, Google tweaks its algorithms pretty regularly; in fact, changes to the Google search algorithms are ongoing throughout the year, as search engines seek to fine-tune their product and provide users with even better, more relevant answers to their queries. Though most of these updates pass without any fuss, occasionally there will be a seismic shift in the way Google does business—an algorithmic update so significant that it engenders equal parts excitement and panic among SEO buffs and marketing professionals.
Most small business owners understand how important it is to optimize their website for maximum search engine visibility. Actually executing good SEO is a daunting prospect, though, especially for those with no particular technical background in this field. Not only is SEO a big concept, touching on everything from website design to social media savvy, but it’s also ever-changing. What counted for good SEO in 2015 may not be as effective in 2016. Simply put, it can be hard to keep up, especially for small business owners who already have a million other things on their plate.
Keywords will probably always play an integral role in online marketing. While keyword use can be both haphazard and counterproductive—as in the practice of “keyword stuffing”—smart keyword use is essential to good SEO & effective SEM. It provides relevant information to the search engine algorithms as well as to search engine users; it provides focus and direction for content creation. As such, targeting the right keywords is a critically important step in an integrated marketing approach.
Something we emphasize at enCOMPASS is taking an integrative approach to marketing. There is an abundance of marketing tools and resources to choose from today, ranging from pay-per-click ads to social media channels to YouTube—but wielding these tools in isolation from one another won’t help you reach your branding and outreach goals. To be effective, these different tactics must all be employed harmoniously, all pointed toward the same goal and working in a complementary fashion.